My Experience as an ONLINE FACILITATOR.

The end is here for our second course towards our Online Teaching Certificate. Half way there I tell myself. After completing this course, I have met the expected outcomes stated in the course. I am able to select strategies for developing an online learning community that are appropriate to course content and student needs. I am able to select appropriate synchronous and asynchronous communication technologies for interacting directly with students, individually and with the class as a whole. I have been able to employ effective online facilitation strategies to maintain active and appropriate student-student interaction. I am able to develop rubrics that clearly define student performance requirements for online courses. I missed the opportunity to submit this important assignment but did more research on this and felt comfortable with it. I am now able to employ alternative online teaching strategies that address different ways of learning.

My experience throughout this course has been a positive one. Due to medical issues I was not able to put forth as much effort as I wanted to. My experience as an Online Facilitator was a fun one. I had lot's of fun during week 9 which was my facilitation week. Unit 9: Focused on the technical role instructors play in the online environment. Everyone was there for me and it turned out to be a fantastic experience and I felt very comfortable. My topic to discuss was the TECHNICAL ROLE. Never do we anticipate the problems that can happen and yes, Murphy's Law happened because on the day of my facilitation week my computer caught a virus and I could not log in to join everyone. I panicked but started to think and called my professor who by the way is the best. She gave me the phone number to join by phone and it worked.

We read and discussed about many things regarding different technology roles we take as online instructors. We must perform, according to Berge, the ultimate objective of the technical role which is to "make the technology transparent" to the student. Even though many see this as a simple process, just know that there are many skills required in order to make this happen.

Technology must be selected and implemented in such a way that it clearly supports pedagogical purposes and integrates seamlessly into the course environment. In this unit, we will focus on this final role that online instructors play and identify the skills and activities that are involved in executing it effectively.

I will first write about my synchronous experience. What does synchronous mean? Synchronous communication (SC) can be defined as real-time communication that occurs between two or more people through a virtual or electronically mediated system. SC systems have become more prevalent as network bandwidth has increased and become both more readily available and affordable.

When I began to prepare to facilitate I was a bit nervous especially because the professor would be there to observe. Leading a synchronous communication session was fun, challenging and rewarding at the same time. I had everyone there from professor Silver to each and every one of my classmates. My experience was unforgettable and listening to the archive made me realize that I need to be more confident and stop getting so nervous. We were told to do this blog entry quickly to have our experience fresh in our minds but with the archive feature on Horizon Live we relive that moment again. It was an unforgettable experience but we do need to hear ourselves in order to judge our own teaching and improve on our weaknesses. All my classmates were available to discuss many of the items presented that night of my faciliation. Synchronous chats are always rewarding. I learned a lot about facilitating in this class and with this comes my gratitude to all my professors. In this class we had to provide a feedback report to the student facilitators (via email) for all synchronous sessions.


My asynchronous experience was also one of my favorites as well. I had the opportunity to answer to the students replies and comments about this topic. I replied quickly to all the students, but there was one student who had provided information that did not meet the demands of the required question. This was an uncomfortable situation because I've had past issues with this student and did not know how to address the problem in the best way possible to avoid getting the student mad instead I wanted her to submit the correct information the question requested. It was a great change for this student to use higher order thinking in order to engage her in this great learning opportunity.

I truly did not know what to expect in this course. I knew and considered that this would not be as difficult as the previous class and when the professor told us that same thing I was at ease. I have to admit that no course is easy towards this certificate. We have to work extra hard and apply ourselves in everything we do in order to have a positive outcome. My fear was definitely not being able to survive through the whole course due to many set backs in my life.

As the weeks progressed I did apply myself more because I knew that I was a bit behind. I have been successful at completing all the required assignments that I need to turn in. There is only one thing that I did not comprehend very well and which I expressed my concern to the professor this was dealing with HTML. I am not alone in this many of the other classmates also expressed this same concern.

I have been surprised by many things during this course. One of them being how some classmates come to the rescue to complete an assignment for a group project while others because of medical conditions or other things do not get as involved as the others and yet the group grade is the same. There is a saying, "If you want to achieve your dreams you better work and play well with others." While this is true many students do not care to work in teams or complete group assignments. I want to take this time to say thank you to Ray and Shirley for helping our group finalize the group project. It was fun to work on the summary with Shirley. In the past we have worked very well together. I look forward to continuing this journey with Shirley next semester.

This experience has definitely changed my perspective on facilitation. I know for sure that online teaching is for me. I also know that we have to be ready to improvise when things do not go our way.

Thank you to all my online facilitators for making a great teacher out of me. I want all of you to know that your positive feedback and encouraging words make us believe in ourselves and be confident in all that we do. Again thanks.

Josie Davila